Blogging through Retirement with Mike Bellah, Ph.D.

Month: July 2012

Place. Got to thinking about it while riding Amtrak’s Empire Builder between Seattle and Chicago. Does a place shape its people? Are the folks in Wenatchee, Washington (the sign says “Apple Capital of the World”) different from the anglers and loggers in Flathead, Montana (Flathead Lake is the largest fresh water lake west of the […]

He was there in 1966 in the Open-A cabin at Hidden Falls Ranch when this rebellious teen gave his life to Christ. And he was there a few years later in Dallas when, away at a new college with a wife and new baby, I wrestled with a depression I couldn’t seem to shake. My […]

What if the train is not merely a vehicle to get us to our destination? What if the train is the destination? Then unplanned conversations with strangers would not be ancillary to those much anticipated visits with family and friends we’ll have along the way. In fact, maybe these train talks are planned, only by […]

“Live huge.” It’s how Ginny Auer’s husband Troy signed his last letter to her. That happened a little over a year ago when Troy succumbed to a rare form of cancer. According to Ginny, “live huge” was the philosophy her husband lived by. Every day was a time to “suck the marrow from the bones […]

The consequences for almost missing our train? Two words—More expenses: For the change fee at AmTrak For an extra night’s lodging (and hotels aren’t cheap in LA) For two extra meals And two cab fares Yep. Seems you don’t want to even almost miss your train. On the other hand . . . Back in […]

They’re the first words that popped up when I googled “What if I miss my train?” It was Monday a couple of weeks ago, I was doing research on traveling by Amtrak and noticed that many trains run late—I mean seriously late, two or three hours late. And then I remembered I had given us […]